From The THN Archive: FIRE & ICE

The Hockey News has released its archive to all THN subscribers: 76 years of history, stories, and features.

Subscribe now to view the full THN Archives here and read the full issue here.

Also, go to thn.com/free to subscribe.

"Fire & Ice" - July 15, 2016 – Vol. 70, Issue 2

It’s funny how a guy can go to Buffalo hundreds of times and never come across the Erie Basin Marina. That’s because it’s not such a great place to visit in the middle of the winter, and they don’t play hockey there. But it’s spectacular. Like downtown Buffalo, once a wasteland where they now hold mass yoga classes on Saturday mornings, it’s undergoing a startling renaissance. Just down the canal is the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park, home to several decommissioned U.S. naval vessels, including the Fletcher-class destroyer USS The Sullivans, named for five brothers aged 20 to 27 who lost their lives in the Second World War.

On this day, though, it’s the teenagers built like battleships that have taken center stage nearby. It’s Media Day outside for the top prospects of the 2016 draft. At one pod is Jakob Chychrun, a man-boy who could walk into any NHL dressing room, throw up an Arnold, and not look out of place. At another is his boyhood pal, Logan Brown, who stands 6-foot-6, weighs 220 pounds and, if there’s a perfect storm in his development, could turn out to be a bigger version of Joe Thornton.

But it’s a pod right by the water where all the action is. It’s a little more elevated than the others, presumably to represent the two players about to occupy them. It’s where, a little more than 24 hours before they become the first two selections in the draft, Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine will display the difference in their personalities. They couldn’t be more diametrically opposed players or people. Matthews, you get the sense quickly, was born with a severe case of seriousness. He’s all business. Laine, meanwhile, is more playful. On this day, he’s wearing a Minnesota Twins baseball cap, backward of course, and sporting a pair of denim cutoffs with holes strategically located to maximize the fashion statement. Before Laine takes to the podium, an NHL employee asks him to remove his sunglasses, to which he asks how he’s supposed to deal with the sun in his eyes. After a brief conversation, he agrees to take them off and tucks them into the collar of his NHL-issued golf shirt.

Laine takes the podium first and speaks freely and comfortably, in Finnish and English. He has matured in his game and his attitude since the Ivan Hlinka Tournament in 2014 when frustrated with his playing time, he was kicked off the Finnish team for flipping the bird to coach Mika Marttila and making a veiled death threat. It was a game against the Czech Republic, and with his team trailing by a goal and his goaltender out of the net, Marttila didn’t put Laine on the ice to try to get the equalizer. So Laine handled it like the immature 16-year-old he was at the time. “Yeah, I remember the game,” Laine recalled. “He didn’t let me play. I was 16, and I couldn’t handle it because I played all those minutes of the games with my home team as a kid. I couldn’t handle that, and I just said to the guy next to me that I was going to punch the coach, and that kind of started that thing. It was all over the news, and it wasn’t fun.”

Next comes Matthews, wearing perfectly pressed dress shorts and sporting a buttoned-down demeanor to match. In his 18-minute and 36-second interview, he uses “surreal” (a word that, with “obviously,” must be eliminated from every player’s lexicon) to describe the whirlwind of the past couple days. “It’s been a lot of fun, pretty hectic, but it’s been a cool experience,” Matthews said. “It’s something you dream about as a kid, and now that it’s a day away from possibly happening, it’s definitely pretty surreal.”

The most interesting nugget from Matthews is that he wears No. 34 in honor of his grandfather, Billy, who played college basketball at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Clearly, some of Matthews’ best coaching has come off the ice.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. If Matthews sounds like he’s programmed, it’s because he’s been groomed for this moment and everything that comes with it for the past couple years. Like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid, he’s a phenom. And with that great gift of talent comes great responsibilities. One of them is to refrain from saying or doing anything stupid that’ll tarnish the brand. Laine, meanwhile, is relatively new to the spotlight. This time last year, not many people even knew who he was, but his maturity and improvement on the ice has thrust him into the hockey world’s consciousness. And he’s still young. He hasn’t had the genes that make him a unique individual surgically extracted from him yet.

So what we have here are the seeds for a good old-fashioned career rivalry. The fact Matthews went first overall to the Toronto Maple Leafs and Laine to the Winnipeg Jets adds spice to the proceedings. Eleven years ago, the NHL was blessed with the emergence of a down-to-earth young man with sublime talent, a center who played and conducted himself well beyond his age. Because of the canceled season in 2004-05, the league had a dynamic winger with charisma and superstar potential drop into its lap at the same time.

And just like that, Crosby vs. Alex Ovechkin was born. Save for a couple years when one or the other took a brief leave from his place among the game’s top performers, the battle has been going on since.

Before you get worked up, we’re not suggesting there’s a place in the Hall of Fame reserved for Matthew’s and Laine’s plaques like the ones being held for each of Crosby and Ovechkin. A more apt comparison could very well be the Taylor vs. Tyler rivalry that was sparked six years ago when Hall, Taylor went first overall to the Edmonton Oilers and Seguin, Tyler was taken second by the Boston Bruins. But there are connections to be made to ‘Sid’ and ‘Ovie’ when forecasting the future of Matthews vs. Laine. “It could very well be Crosby vs. Ovechkin, Part II,” said Shane Malloy, who wrote a book on NHL scouting and co-hosts Hockey Prospect Radio on Sirius XM. “The reason why it could be is Laine and his cockiness and confidence in him being a great player. If he were a subdued Finn, like they normally are, then maybe not. But because he’s so brash and he wants to succeed so badly, it could be a fight.”

There is, of course, a cavernous difference between 2016-17 and 2005-06. More than a decade ago, the NHL was coming back after taking a year off so the millionaires could go to war with the billionaires. The league, eager to win fans back quickly, rebranded itself with a renewed crackdown on obstruction and a double cohort of young players who could exploit them. This led to the perfect storm that let Crosby and Ovechkin enter the league at the same time and, even better, in the same conference. It wasn’t long before both of them were going hammer and tong, scoring matching hat tricks in just their second playoff game against each other. It was the NHL’s version of Larry Bird vs. Magic Johnson. More than a decade later, both are poised to record their 1,000th career points in the NHL. “It was a different time,” said TSN scout and former NHL GM Craig Button. “Sidney Crosby was a generational player, and from the minute they stepped out onto the ice, you had two moribund franchises, Pittsburgh and Washington, that were instantly energized. Winnipeg and Toronto are not moribund franchises. Washington and Pittsburgh were dying. This was a major injection of life into these franchises.”

But there’s enough to intrigue us. Matthews and Laine have been on parallel paths to the NHL for a while now, and that was never more evident than during the World Championship. Despite being only 18 years old, Matthews was the best player for the United States. Despite turning 18 just before the tournament, Laine was the best player in the whole tournament, capturing MVP and best-forward honors. Both were brilliant at times, making jaw-dropping plays and leaving NHL players shaking their heads in disbelief. Laine is the more decorated of the two so far, winning gold at the World Juniors and silver at the World Championship, but many observers think the opposite could happen in the NHL, the same way it has with Crosby and Ovechkin. Multiple scouts mentioned that Laine would win the Calder Trophy next season and gain more individual accolades, while Matthews would finish his career with more Stanley Cups. Despite not yet having played a game in the NHL, neither will be without confidence when his NHL career begins this coming season. “I’m ready for all of this,” Laine said. “I’m having a good time and practicing hard, and I will be ready after the summer.”

“I believe I can be a franchise centerman, the No. 1 centerman in the NHL,” Matthews said. “That’s my ultimate goal.”

One thing is certain: their backgrounds couldn’t be more different. Laine comes from Tampere, the third-largest and most hockey-crazed city in Finland. It’s home to 23 players who have played in the NHL, including Teppo Numminen, whose 1,372 games are second only to Teemu Selanne among Finnish-born players. The first hockey game ever played in Finland was reputedly in Tampere on Lake Nasijarvi. Its climate is described as sub-arctic. The first arena ever built in the country is there, and the city is home to two teams in the Finnish League, Laine’s Tappara team and Ilves, a team that has won 16 championships and is the most successful team in league history. Matthews, by contrast, was born in Scottsdale, Ariz., where the average high is 100 degrees in September, when NHL training camps begin, before dipping down to 89 in October for the start of the season. (But it’s a dry heat.) Matthews’ first exposure to hockey came when his father took him to a Coyotes game in the former America West Arena in downtown Phoenix. This was before the Coyotes messed everything up by moving to the Jobing.com Arena (now Gila River) in Glendale. Had his father been forced to drive into the blinding sun to get to a game, perhaps little Auston would have never been turned on to hockey. “I don’t really remember much because I was so young,” Matthews said. “I just remember it being extremely loud. I don’t remember who they were playing or what the score was, but I remember I found it very intriguing. I started playing a couple years later and just fell in love with it.”

The hockey world will have the better part of the next two decades to get to know Matthews and Laine more. Until then, here’s how they stack up against each other:

Both are 18-year-olds on the verge of playing in the NHL, so suffice to say they’re advanced beyond their years. Matthews could give Jonathan Toews a run for his money as ‘Captain Serious,’ and Laine, it appears, has truly begun to grasp what it takes to become an NHL player. Scouts who have watched Laine closely marvel at how far his game progressed this past season. “I think everyone knows now that I can handle everything on the ice and off the ice,” Laine said. “I’ve matured a lot as a person and a player.

Don Granato, who coached Matthews with the U.S. National Team Development Program, tells a story about his prized player’s quick learning. After Granato took him to a game at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, where he dropped in on his protege’s future NHL coach, Mike Babcock, Matthews spotted Flyers center Claude Giroux leaning against the wall and talking on his cellphone in the hallway. “He came to me and said, ‘That’s Claude Giroux! Can I get get a picture?’ ” Granato said. “I said to him, ‘Don’t you dare get a picture.’ He looked at me, and for one quick second, I was dealing with a 12-year-old. For one quick second. And that was it.”

For Laine, the notoriety surrounding the Ivan Hlinka incident caused him to take stock and reset his attitude. “That situation,” he said, “helped me grow a lot.”

Off the charts for both. There’s a video Granato has seen of Matthews on the golf course. He’s keeping up a golf ball with an iron in one hand and in the other is his driver. At one point, Matthews drops the iron, grips his driver like a baseball bat, and smacks the golf ball down the fairway. So he has sublime skill, though he’s closer to the 80-point, 200-foot player Sidney Crosby has become than the 100-point scorer he started out being.

Laine, meanwhile, has an Ovechkin-like shot and projects as a dynamic scorer. His physical play and on-ice smarts make him an imposing player. “Laine is a big, brash, one-shot goal scorer who can hammer the puck and go to the crowd and raise the roof,” Malloy said. “If he’s with the right center, if he’s with (Mark) Scheifele and they grow together, he’ll be scoring 40 goals before long.”

It’s one thing to be drafted No. 1 overall and have to shoulder the hopes of a franchise. It’s another when that franchise is in the biggest, most hockey-crazed market in the league, one that will mark 50 years this coming season since its last Stanley Cup. But there’s nothing in Matthews’ makeup to suggest he’s not up to the task. “Toronto is the hockey mecca of the world,” he said. “It comes with a lot of pressure and everything, but that’s something I think I can handle.” Even though Winnipeg is a fraction of the size, Jets fans are just as rabid, possibly more. And after five years of reacquainting with their team, they’re starting to get restless for results. Perhaps for now ignorance is bliss when it comes to what Laine is facing. “I’ve heard that it’s pretty cold out there and it’s a big city and nice city,” Laine said. “Those are the things I know.”

So what can we expect from Matthews and Laine in 2016-17? Crosby and Ovechkin combined for 91 goals and 208 points in their first season. It’s difficult to believe Matthews and Laine will hit those numbers, but the pair will be neck-and-neck for the Calder Trophy, just as Crosby and Ovechkin were in their rookie year. Ovechkin edged Crosby for the honor, and Laine should have the inside track over Matthews. He’s in a good situation in Winnipeg, on a team with a lot of veteran players. With him, the Jets should have one of the league’s best power plays. Matthews, however, is on a team that’s still a work in progress. Although William Nylander and Mitch Marner lead an emerging group of prospects, the Leafs will continue to feel the pain coach Mike Babcock talked about when he took the job. Still, Matthews is a game-changer. “Obviously, we got a lot better,” Babcock said. “He’s an elite player, elite drive train, big-body guy, makes players better. We’re going to have to look after him because he’s just a kid. But he’s going to make us better, and he’s going to develop into a top, top center in the National Hockey League.”

No pressure. But there’s no less on Matthews and Laine than there was on Crosby and Ovechkin 11 years ago. Oh and, by the way, you might want to reserve your spot on the Barcalounger for the night of Oct. 19. That’s the first game of the season between the Leafs and the Jets and the first career meeting for Matthews and Laine. It’ll be fun to watch. ■

Join Jason Newland's Columbus Blue Jacket page on Bunches, a new app that connects sports fans. Also, you can watch a new YouTube game show about the Blue Jackets, Around the Fifth Line.